“She can take care of herself,” said Beauchamp.
Palmet denied it. “No woman can. Upon my honour, it’s a shame that she should be out alone. What are her people? I’ll run—from you, you know—and see her safe home. There’s such an infernal lot of fellows about; and a girl simply bewitching and unprotected! I ought to be after her.”
Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of canvassing.
“Then will you tell me where she lives?” Palmet stipulated. He reproached Beauchamp for a notorious Grand Turk exclusiveness and greediness in regard to women, as well as a disposition to run hard races for them out of a spirit of pure rivalry.
“It’s no use contradicting, it’s universally known of you,” reiterated Palmet. “I could name a dozen women, and dozens of fellows you deliberately set yourself to cut out, for the honour of it. What’s that story they tell of you in one of the American cities or watering-places, North or South? You would dance at a ball a dozen times with a girl engaged to a man—who drenched you with a tumbler at the hotel bar, and off you all marched to the sands and exchanged shots from revolvers; and both of you, they say, saw the body of a drowned sailor in the water, in the moonlight, heaving nearer and nearer, and you stretched your man just as the body was flung up by a wave between you. Picturesque, if you like!”
“Dramatic, certainly. And I ran away with the bride next morning?”
“No!” roared Palmet; “you didn’t. There’s the cruelty of the whole affair.”
Beauchamp laughed. “An old messmate of mine, Lieutenant Jack Wilmore, can give you a different version of the story. I never have fought a duel, and never will. Here we are at the shop of a tough voter, Mr. Oggler. So it says in my note-book. Shall we put Lord Palmet to speak to him first?”
“If his lordship will put his heart into what he says,” Mr. Oggler bowed. “Are you for giving the people recreation on a Sunday, my lord?”
“Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military bands, puppet-shows, theatres, merry-go-rounds, bosky dells—anything to make them happy,” said Palmet.